Florence – We Miss You So Much When We’re Not Here!

Beautiful Florence!! I’m just going to start with that, because I do like to do these blogs chronologically, and chronologically, there is some complaining (not ‘splaining’) that I need to get out of the way. Just a little.

We might be getting too old for these long travel days.

There – I said it. Though the alternative is probably not anything we want to do, ie getting ourselves across Canada and then possibly a week of enforced cruising across the Pacific. Already that sounds like something we don’t want to do, but we would probably arrive refreshed, at least in London. Which is close to everything else we could want to get to. So – maybe that’s the answer. With the size of airplane seats these days and the 2 square feet of personal space, even shorties like me are feeling claustrophobic. And no Swiss Air, chopping the tray in half and making it fold over into itself for storage is not helping. As a matter of fact, it screwed up Amazon Gadget Number 1, which was a cool tray cover with its own storage pockets (so you don’t have to reach inside the gross ones that everyone else has put their dirty Kleenexes into). Doesn’t work with the magical folding trays if you ever want to have the tray in the closed position. Amazon gadget fail #1.

There might be a few of those over the course of this trip. Fail #2 (which is actually #1 I guess, is my handy dandy portable toilet. Yes. It is a thing. However, even though it folds up to a flat 2 lb in its own carry bag, not really doable when one is determined to only take carry on luggage. Which the Swiss Air website determines to be 8 kg/18 lb., and that should be the combined weight of your carry on suitcase and your one personal item. So we worked hard to get our contents down to the bare bones (without the handy dandy carry on toilet) and made it to between 9 and 10 kg. Don needn’t have worried so much about it though, since we were directed straight to the security line, no need to check in at a desk. No one ever even looked sidewise at our over weight carry on suitcases or over stuffed personal items. So that was a nice surprise.

Don’s complaint was that they charged us for wine on the international flight. He thinks that should be against the rules. Though they wisely charged us in Swiss Francs, so we have absolutely no idea how much our drinks were.

By the time we arrived in Florence, we were both wondering what we were thinking and our stomachs hurt from lack of sleep and movement. All of which was cured by a dip in the pool.

We asked for pool towels as we checked in – no, we don’t want to wait until we come back down – we’ll take them now thank you.

So we cooled off, had a spritz, and checked periodically at the reception area to see if Tina and Dave had arrived. Second time lucky, and there they were! We had all made it – and we are ready for our first once in a lifetime Italy adventure with our dear friends from California.

Once we had all cooled down and had the tiniest of siestas, we headed for a walk to the duomo and took in all the beauty that Florence has to offer along the way (to anywhere). Towards the back of the Duomo there was a guy playing so beautifully on his violin that we took a table across from him and ordered a couple of pizzas and a bottle of red wine. I took the all time cutest video of the four of us with the violin playing in the background. Unfortunately, I didn’t press record when I thought I did, but it was a wonderful moment that we will always remember.

Heading home Dave wanted to have a gelato experience and so of course we all joined him. And the first one did not disappoint – here are a bunch of happy, sticky faced gelato-eaters.

A good night’s sleep is what we all need, so we can drop the exhaustion, the travel concerns, the stress, and start living la doce vita, here in beautiful Florence.